Contents

History

Pre-debut

Before any of the members debut, most of the members were under SM Entertainments pre-debut team, SM Rookies under the name SR14B (SM Rookies 2014 Boys). When SM Rookies were announced in December 2013, they announced members Taeyong and Jeno, with Jaehyun, Mark, Jisung, Johnny, Ten, and Yuta on the same month days later. In April 2014, Haechan and Jaemin were announced. In July 2014, they released a video of Taeyong's rapping skills on SM Town YouTube channel. The next month, they released a video of Johnny, Taeyong, and another rookie named Hansol of a dance focus video titled “Super Moon” showing off their dance moves. In January 2015, Doyoung was announced as part of SM Rookies as him and Jaehyun was introduced as the new MCs on MBC Music Champion. In October 2015, Taeil was introduced. In January 2016, Winwin was introduced.

On January 27, the group was announced by SM Entertainment‘s founder, Lee Soo Man, at SM’s Coex Artium during “SMTown: New Culture Technology 2016" press conference. It was anounced that there will be different teams that will debut based in different countries around the world. There will be various collaborations and units formed between the different groups, allowing for movement of members and new recruits into the groups. There also won’t be a set member number for these groups. It was speculated that there will be 40 members debuting under NCT.

On April 4, the first sub-unit was announced to be NCT U with pictures announcing members Mark and Jaehyun, later adding members Taeil, Taeyong, Doyoung, and Ten. NCT U was described as the main group of NCT. It was announced that there will be two NCT U groups, each having different member organization. On April 9, they released the song “The 7th Sense” and "Without You" as digital singles, and made their debut on music program Music Bank four days later.